Tag: weight-loss

Life is fleeting. I, like most other people, very rarely face up to this fact. Every now and then though something makes you realise how fragile life really is. When that happens you need to use that emotion to fuel your own grip on life. Make the most of what you have got, now while you have the chance…

After a bit of recent reflection, I realised that to help me get over the passing of Dad I focussed all of my efforts on losing weight. I looked at myself and felt that I needed to do something about my growing waistline.

Instead of messing about for a couple of weeks, which is what normally happens when I half-heartedly try a new diet, I outlayed some money and signed up for three months on the Diet Chef diet. Alongside the diet I have really upped my activity levels by walking everywhere. This includes walking Shirley to work most days before returning to where I work. That means I tend to cover at least 5 or 6 miles almost every day. Together this has worked wonders and I’ve lost 2½st (35lbs) so far with about 3 or 4 weeks to go!

As I mentioned in I’m Back, Bigger But Hopefully Better I have been on the Diet Chef diet for about 2 months now. As you have probably guessed by now, looking at the title of this post, I have lost over 2 stone in that time. In fact it’s just over 30 pounds!

Now this is probably a bit quicker than recommended. It’s very exciting though. Lots of people have noticed the change which is a definite sign that things are going in the right direction. I’m under 18 stone now for the first time in quite a while. If I carry on like this it can’t be long until I reach the 17½ stone target I set myself back in my Goals For 2011…

As I still have about 6 weeks left on the Diet Chef diet I might have to start setting a new, lower target!

As you may have noticed I have had a bit of a break from blogging recently. I’ll go into the reasons in a bit more details in a minute but you’ll be glad to hear that I’m back and I plan to start writing regularly again.

I’ve had some time to take a new look at what’s important to me. I have been slacking off a bit recently and after a bit of thought on the subject I realised that I didn’t have as much energy as I should have. This led me to look at my health and one thing that did come to light was that I had put on a bit of weight again…

I’m determined to get my energy levels back up so it’s time to start a new diet. After some searching I decided on Diet Chef. The idea of pre-prepared meals seems great as I think portion control can be one of my downfalls.

It’s not exactly cheap, but at under £6 per day it’s over the top either. The costs involved may even help as when you invest in something you take it a bit more seriously…

Recently I have been trying out a very restrictive diet to help Shirley test for possible food intolerances. It started off very hard as the choice of foods was extremely limited…

For two weeks we stuck to lamb or turkey with carrots, broccoli, parsnips, sweet potato, courgettes or cauliflower. Luckily fresh herbs were allowed so at least there was a bit of variation of flavour.

Rice was allowed in pretty much any form so Rice Krispies for breakfast with rice milk, rice cakes for lunch with a slice of turkey and so on. Sunflower oil and spreads allowed for some frying and with the addition of some rice flour even gave the option of some baking.

Along with this we were allowed only a few types of fruit, I stuck mainly to pineapple, peaches and bananas. Drinks were also restricted to camomile or redbush tea, no coffee or ordinary tea, water and fruit juice, but only from the fruits allowed so cranberry juice and the occasional pineapple juice.

My last Monthly Review was back in March. I explained that I was going to try writing less frequent reviews in the hope of tackling some of the larger items on my list of Yearly Goals.

So now we’ve reached the mid way point in the year it’s time to sit down and work out how I’m doing so far. I’m going to go through each point in turn and update my progress on each one. This post got a bit too big to put out all in one go so I have decided to split it into 2 posts.

This first part covers the first three sections, Friends & Family, Business and Health & Fitness. Then on Tuesday I am going to post the rest.

I know this is a bit of a break from the usual Friday but I have decided to try and change my posting day to a Tuesday instead from now on. Fridays are always a little bit busy, making sure everything is wrapped up before the weekend so I thought I would try something new.

Not sure about you but I gave up on New Year Resolutions a while ago as they usually only seem to last for a few weeks before they are completely forgotten about. That’s not to say I have never had a successful resolution!

The problem is that it is too easy to fall off the bandwagon and just think, “Oh well, there’s always next year!”

To really make a go of things the minute you catch yourself slipping off the path you need to address it and try and right the problem before you go back to square one. At least that way you are making a steady progression in the right direction.

As one year ends another begins. What better time to look back on the year that has just finished and look forward to the year that has just started?

The monthly reviews I do have been very helpful but as they only cover a period of a month there are some goals that are just not appropriate. So I decided that I would take some time to review how I got on in 2010 and set out some targets for 2011.

First things first though:

Happy New Year.
I hope 2011 brings you good health and an abundance of happiness.

Here we are again, time for my monthly round up. I am very pleased with my progress this month, and I even got a pleasant surprise this morning, read on to find out more…

I think it is about time that I started to bring in a few pennies. To begin with I am going to start adding a few affiliate links to Amazon.co.uk to some posts. This means that whenever you click on a link that takes you to Amazon from my site I will receive a small amount of money for getting them your business. Don’t worry you will not notice any difference and the prices will be the same even if you had gone to the site directly. The only difference is that I get a little cut of Amazon’s profit. I just thought it best to disclose this fact so as not to offend anyone.

The next aim is to create a product of my own that I can make some money from down the line. That is going to take a bit of time though.

This month seems to have flown by. With the trip to Dublin I don’t seem to have achieved as much as I had hoped but does it really matter?

What’s the rush? I can feel myself slowly settling into self-employment. There is bound to be a bit of a learning curve and as long as I am bringing in enough to pay the bills there is no desperate need to start pushing out into new uncharted areas quite yet.

I am getting much more organised but there is a backlog of stuff from the many years of being unorganised… My photo collection is a prime example of this. I have digital photos going back over 4 years that still need editing and organising. There are also boxes of older photos, negatives and even slides that I have come across that I have promised myself to digitise.

I also feel that I am starting to become a lot more productive which is a very good sign for things to come I just need to get this backlog under control first…

Having said all that though I didn’t do brilliantly with my goals for this month…